


Fuck ups and Failures

by ElCapitan18



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 15:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5971987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElCapitan18/pseuds/ElCapitan18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric's never been very good with drunk criers, nor has he ever witnessed Hawke shed a single tear. When she shows up at the Hanged Man both drunk and crying he has no choice but to adapt. A friend in need and all of that...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fuck ups and Failures

**Author's Note:**

> I am legit the worst at summaries. Sorry.

Andraste’s flaming night shift, she was a mess. Varric nodded at the worried looking bar maid, signaling for her to bring a pint of water instead of ale. At the other side of the room a human woman was wobbling around as she perused his belongings. 

She was tall, though she often reminded him that her height was hardly more than average. Her skin was milky in it’s pallidness, more prone to burning than tanning the longer they spent under the Kirkwall sun. A hundred ringlets of chocolate colored curls fell past her shoulders, out of the bun she forced them into when they were out on the streets looking to make coin. 

When she turned around Varric found himself caught in her bleary gaze. Eyes more blue than a cloudless sky were surrounded by red. Her eyes were bloodshot, and if Varric didn’t know her any better he would have blamed it on her being drunk and not on the tears she was trying so hard to hide. 

“You’ve got a lot of do-dads, Varric,” Bella Hawke observed, her stance wavering a bit as she tried to keep her footing. 

Varric huffed out an agreeing laugh. “Not to be mistaken for do-hickies. Those are for chumps and Orlesians.” When she picked a trinket up off of the table and lifted it to her face for close inspection, he let out a heavy breath and suggested, “How about you take a seat, Hawke. Join me for a drink.”

The eldest Hawke was physically incapable of turning down a drink. Even as she held a pint in her hand, the promise of more was too tempting an offer. She placed the small item back down where she’d found it and lumbered over to the chair Varric was gesturing too. Plopping down with a groan, she slammed the mug in her hand on the table, sending a splash of ale over its lip, and leaned back in her seat. 

Bloodshot blue eyes looked to Varric, waiting for a comment no doubt. Bella’s expression was flat in a way that he had never seen it before. Her features were normally bright with a laugh, a joke in her blue eyes that only she would find amusing. But tonight the mask was off, unhinged, leaving this sad person that Varric had always suspected lied beneath. 

When the bar maid arrived at the doorway, Varric waved her over and started up conversation with Hawke, hoping that it would be enough to distract her from the fact he was going to ply her with water for the rest of the night. “What are you doing around these parts, Hawke?”

She hooked her fingers around the new mug’s handle and lifted it up. “Was looking for piss poor ale and good company,” explained Bella before taking a sip of the water filled cup. Blue eyes immediately narrowed on Varric with the realization of his deception, but when she set the cup back down she didn’t comment on the switch-a-roo. 

Returning to her original mug, she used it to shove the one filled with water away from her, and slouched down in her seat. Bella held the mug on her seat’s arm rest, and rubbed the heel of her palm into her tired eyes. Finishing her earlier statement, the rest of her explanation was voiced with a sigh. 

“Everyone knows that Low Town has the best gutters in Kirkwall.” She pointed a finger at Varric and her voice slurred. “And you know me, Varric, I won’t settle for anything less.”

She jested, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Varric had to fish her out of the gutter after a night of excess. Bella Hawke liked to drink, and she liked to drink well past her limit. While normally she was a happy drunk, tonight was different and the thought of letting her leave the Hanged Man alone made him uneasy. 

Silence joined them for a second. Varric watched Bella as she moved her mug from the armrest to her chest, where she stared down at the ale filled cup and sighed through her nose. He was watching her closely enough to notice how her eyes glistened with tears. When she shut her eyes to force the tears from them, a single bead escaped from the corner of her eye and Varric’s stomach flipped as she used the pad of her index finger to casually wipe it away. 

In the years that he’d known her, never had Varric seen her like this. Bella laughed and joked, she made fun of herself and those around her. She helped people that came to her for it, and she allowed herself to be taken advantage of if it meant sparing someone else. The eldest Hawke _did not_ cry. To see her do so was… heartbreaking. 

Just as Varric was about to open his mouth and fill the void with idle conversation, Bella started to speak. Her voice was low, grated, and deadpan. They were both just trying to fill the silence. 

“So,” she started, her watery blue gaze still pointed at the pint held up on her breast. “Fenis stopped by the estate earlier.”

An eyebrow shot up. “Yeah?” replied Varric as he leaned back into his seat. 

Bella and Fenris had been playing at “romance” for a while now, flirting in their own awkward way. She was crazy about the broody elf, anyone with eyes could see that. But Fenris was complicated, and had a lot of things that he needed to work through. When he noticed things start to pick up between his two friends Varric had made a mental note to talk with Bella about it. 

It was too late now. 

Nodding in response to the question in Varric’s voice, she supplied, “We uhh…” and made a circle with the fingers of the hand holding her cup, and used the index finger of her other hand to  poke in and out of the hole. 

Varric was surprised even if he should have known better. Everything had been leading to this, but if the night had gone the way Bella had probably expected it to, she wouldn’t have been here with him. Regardless he ventured to ask, “How’d that go?”

Her shoulders bounced with a shrug and Bella took a long drink from the mug in her hand. Ale dripped a bit from the sides of the cup, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her forearm before returning the cup to its resting spot on her chest. “It was great,” she confessed with a solemn shake of her head. “It was everything I’d imagined it would be.”

A moment passed in silence and Varric filled it with the word that hung there, suspended awkwardly between them. “… But…”

“He left.”

That he was not expecting. Varric frowned and gently investigated. “Why?”

When Bella shrugged again it was with forced nonchalance. “Being with me brought back memories…” She looked up from the alcohol in her cup and met Varric’s gaze for half a second. It was enough time for him to see the devastation in her eyes, the hurt and pain, and self-loathing. He could tell by the look in her eyes the kind of memories she was referring to, but Bella clarified anyway. 

“Being with me made him remember things from before… horrible things, that horrible man, and all of the horrible things that he did to him.” Glaring again at the cup at her breast, Bella’s lips twisted and she shook her head a bit, the motion filled with contempt and a self-hate that made Varric shift a bit in his seat. 

Scoffing indignantly, she grumbled to herself, “And why should I be surprised? _I’m_ horrible. It makes perfect sense.”

Varric frowned at her, hating the conviction with which she’d said the words. “Now, Hawke,” he said with a gentleness reserved for injured animals. “You know that’s not true.”

Ale spilled from her cup when her chest heaved with a loud, “ _Ha!_ ” She met his gaze and held it long enough for him to witness them well with tears she wouldn’t let herself cry. When she looked away it was to point her attention at the table before them. It wasn’t the table she was seeing as she assured him, “I am horrible, Varric, and selfish, and poisonous.”

Before he could argue, Bella explained, “I knew he wasn’t really ready and I rushed him.” A single tear fell and she quickly wiped it away before anymore could follow suit. “I should have stopped before things got out of hand. I should have made sure that he was comfortable, that everything was alright, and that it was what he wanted. But I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking about me. I only ever think about me, because I’m selfish and destructive, and everything I touch turns to ash.”

Her tears were falling freely now, too many for her to bother trying to keep up with. Looking up from her drink, Bella’s blue eyes met Varric’s and she sobbed, “Why am I like this?”

All Varric could do was stare at her. He had no words. There was no comedic story he could pull out of his ass to smooth this tension over. The only option he really had was to sit there and listen as his best friend, who he had never seen cry before, cried it out. And to think that the day had started out so uneventfully. 

“You’re not poisonous, Hawke.” 

She was nodding in argument before his sentence was finished. “I am,” she hiccuped. “Just ask my mother.”

The look he gave her was mildly scolding, even if a part of him knew better than to argue. “Leandra is proud of you, Hawke.”

“She wants to be,” she corrected him. “She wants so badly to be proud of me, but I can see the truth in her eyes when she can bear to look at me. Its all my fault, Varric. Carver dead, Bethany in the Wardens, our fortune restored without an heir to inherit it. Andraste’s short hairs, I’m sure that if you track it far enough she’d find a way to blame the blasted Blight on me too. 

“She looks at me and all she sees is what could have been, what _should_ have been. She wanted an heiress, a lady, someone worthy of the Amell name. Instead she has me…” Bella looked down at herself and clamped her eyes shut. Shaky hands lifted her cup to her lips once more, and she took a long series of gulps before she set it back down on the table. 

Her chin trembled and she shook her head as fresh tears fell from tightly shut eyes. “I’m so lost, Varric,” she wept. Leaning forward in her seat, she perched her elbows up on the table and cradled her head in her hands, fingers threaded through her curly hair as her tears fell freely onto the surface beneath her. 

When she spoke her voice cracked from the strain. “I fuck up everything that I do. But he was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be the one thing that I did right. And I fucked that up too.” Her body shook as sobs wracked out of her. “I actually tried with Fenris. I’ve only ever wanted to do right by him, and then when I finally get my chance…”

Bella was overcome by hysterics, too drunk and emotional to make any further sense. Varric eased out of his chair and strode the half step to where she was seated. Lifting one of her arms over his shoulder, he helped her out of the chair and guided her over to his bed.

She fell into the mattress face first and immediately curled into a tight ball, clutching her chest as she continued to cry uncontrollably. Varric covered her with a blanket before retrieving a fresh chamber pot and placing it well within her reach. He had lost count of all the times she had woken up in her own sick, and he didn’t want his bed to fall victim to her over drinking. 

With the request, “Don’t get sick on my bed, Hawke; those sheets are Antivan.” He returned to his chair and reclaimed his seat. There were some missives from the Merchants Guild he had to deal with, and he had to send word to Blondie about swinging by. 

Come morning, he doubted that Bella would remember anything that happened tonight. She wouldn’t remember the tears, or the confessions she’d made through them. All that she would know was that her head hurt like a bitch, and luckily they knew a healer to help with that. 

Varric was going to have to drop by Fenris’s place sometime, just to check in. As far as Varric knew, Broody was just as enamored with Hawke as she was with him. There had to be an explanation for what had happened between him and Hawke. While prying wasn’t really his style, protecting his friends was; even if it was from themselves, or each other.


End file.
